The Jockey Club yesterday defied the national mood of economic gloom when it announced a record operating profit of £18.8m at its 14 racecourses in 2008, up from £10.9m in 2007. "The credit crunch did not really hit until September last year, and this year will undoubtedly be more difficult," Simon Bazalgette, the club's chief executive, said yesterday, "but this is still an outstanding set of results."

The news that the Jockey Club appears to be weathering the recession is encouraging for the sport, as it remains, in essence, a private club for racing enthusiasts that will re-invest its profits in the sport. What the organisation's senior executives were keen to stress yesterday, though, is that its money-making potential has been greatly enhanced since it decided to hand over its regulatory function to the British Horseracing Authority.

"The structure is much more focused, and we can be much more public about our commercial imperative," Bazalgette said. "We're here to make as much money as we can, which will be invested back into the sport for the long-term good of the sport, and that's a very motivating mission."

Other notable entries in yesterday's accounts include a £120,000 loss at the National Stud in its first year under the club's ownership, which is a major reduction on a loss of well over £1m in 2007. Attendances across the club's tracks were down, however, from 1.83m to 1.78m, despite an increase in fixtures from 304 to 343, representing 23% of the entire British programme.

"A lot of the expansion of fixtures is at Kempton Park," Bazalgette said, "which just has a different attendance profile, shall we say, and actually the total numbers come down to the big events.

"We lost a day at Cheltenham last year and that fundamentally affected the total, and Epsom was closed for most of the year, so it is not really like-for-like. Taking account of that, attendances were pretty good."

The recent opening of the Duchess Stand at Epsom marked the end of a major five-year programme of capital investment at the Jockey Club's courses, and similar projects are unlikely in the immediate future.

"There are new grandstands at Exeter and Huntingdon, but this is not a time to be building up your debt in this market," Bazalgette said. "Cheltenham have plans [for the redevelopment of a main grandstand] and that is the big one we'd like to get done in the next five years, when we come out of this recession."

Bazalgette also paid tribute to Julian Richmond-Watson, whose six-year tenure as senior steward will end next month.

"The Jockey Club remains a self-electing club, but it now focuses on getting people in with a real commercial focus and a great deal of that is down to Julian," Bazalgette said.

"People think it's a chummy bunch of people sat around a table, but it is not like that. It is a very old organisation, but it has changed remarkably quickly to deal with the change of emphasis in the commercial world. Now, we think about our customers, because that is how the sport gets its long-term sustainability."

Bazalgette also thinks that the future for racing as a whole is brighter than many believe. "I swim slightly against the tide on a lot of these things," he said. ­"People often say that we don't have a Bernie Ecclestone figure, but the fact is that only one sport has a Bernie Ecclestone figure, and you can debate just how helpful that is. I think we've now got a structure that can drive racing forward, and is driving it forward."